Emotion is a significant blind spot for most organizations. In the Temkin Group report State of CX Metrics, 2013, we found that only 11% of large companies feel that they do a very good job of measuring customers’ emotional responses. Our ROI of Customer Experience, 2014 shows that emotion is the most significant driver of loyalty, especially when it comes to consumers recommending firms to their friends.

We’ve been measuring emotion as part of our Temkin Experience Ratings for four years. Our emotion rating is based on asking consumers the following question:

Thinking of your most recent interactions with each of these companies, how did you feel about those interactions?

Responses range from 1 (upset) to 7 (delighted) and the emotion rating is calculated as the percentage of consumers who select 6 or 7 minus the percentage who select 1, 2, or 3.

As you can see in the list of leaders and laggards below (from ratings of 268 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers), H-E-B earned the highest overall emotion rating of 84%, outpacing second place Trader Joe’s by three points.

At the other end of the spectrum, Empire BCBS earned the l0west rating of 31% and several companies were just slightly better with 32%: Comcast (Internet and TV service), Charter Communications, and US Cellular.

In a previous post, I defined the three elements of an experience: Success, Effort, and Emotion. We’ve been measuring each of these areas as part of our Temkin Experience Ratings for four years. So I decided to share some insights from the effort ratings component of those overall ratings (you can see this data as part of the Temkin Experience Ratings datasets).

As you can see in the charts below (from ratings of 268 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers):

In one of our recent benchmark studies, we asked consumers what professional sports, if any, they like to watch on TV. Since we’re at the beginning of the NFL season, I decided to take a look at the make-up of NFL fans. Yes, I have data on demographics such as age, income, education, etc. But I’ll share some of that later in the season.

For now, I decided to look at which companies have customers who are the most and the least interested in the NFL. The companies that have the highest percentage of NFL fans are Ford, TD Ameritrade, MSN, Lexus, Chrysler, Charles Schwab, and Dodge. It’s no surprise that many of these firms pay for commercial time during the football games.

Which organizations would reach the lowest percentage of their customers with NFL TV ads? Optimum, Ross, Dollar Tree, Medicaid, and ShopRite.

The bottom line: Since this is an off-topic post, I’ll show my bias: Go Patriots!

We just published the 2014 Temkin Web Experience Ratings, the fourth year of the ratings. It uses feedback from 10,000 U.S. consumers to rate 222 organizations across 19 industries.

Download dataset for $295

USAA’s banking business took the top spot and Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) earned the second highest rating in the 2014 Temkin Web Experience Ratings, which rates 222 companies across 19 industries. USAA’s insurance and credit card businesses tied for third place.Rounding out the top 13 companies in the ratings are Charles Schwab, Amazon.com, credit unions, TD Bank, U.S. Bank, Sheraton, Ace Hardware, eBay, and Nordstrom.

The award for delivering the worst web experience goes to Coventry Health Care, followed closely by Medicaid. Four of the bottom 14 organizations are health plans and three are TV service providers. The remaining companies in the bottom 14 of the Temkin Web Experience Ratings are Charter Communications, Comcast (TV service and Internet service), Dunkin’ Donuts, Time Warner Cable (TV service and Internet service), Jack in the Box,CareFirst, MetroPCS, Highmark, Adobe, and Wendy’s.

Here’s how the industries compare with each other:

The 2014 Temkin Web Experience Ratings shows that companies have made improvements in web experience between 2013 and 2014. Led by airlines, which increased by nearly 15 percentage points since last year, 17 of 19 industries improved. The two industries that earned lower ratings in 2014 are parcel delivery services and rental cars.

Six companies saw their Temkin Web Experience Ratings fall by 10 points or more between 2013 and 2014: Dunkin’ Donuts, Avis, Hertz, Jack in the Box, Dollar, and Blackboard.

Methodology:

The data was collected from an online survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers during January 2014. Quotas were set to mirror the U.S. census data for age, income, gender, ethnicity, and geographic regions of the U.S. population.

Temkin Web Experience Ratings are based on asking consumers the following question about companies with whom they’ve had a customer service interaction during the previous 60 days: “Thinking back to your most recent interaction with the websites of these companies, how satisfied were you with the experience?” Potential responses range from 1= “very dissatisfied” to 7= “very satisfied.” Temkin Web Experience Ratings are calculated by taking the percentages of consumers who respond with a 6 or 7 and subtracting the percentage who respond with 1, 2, or 3.

Download dataset for $295

You can view a sortable list of results from the Temkin Web Experience Ratings as well as other ratings on the Temkin Ratings website.

We recently released the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 268 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Kaiser Permanente earned the top spot with a 68% rating, positioning the company in 109th place overall out of 268 organizations across 19 industries. Humana, meanwhile, earned a rating of 63% and placed 160th overall. While Kaiser Permanente consistently ranks near the top of the list—even taking first place in 2012—this year, Humana ascended from the middle of the pack to the top, improving its rating by an astonishing 12 percentage points.

At the other end of the spectrum, Coventry Health Care (BCBS) plummeted down the ranks after declining 18 percentage points from 2013, leaving it in last place across all 268 companies in the ratings with a score of 41%. Empire (BCBS), Highmark (BCBS), and Medicaid joined Coventry as the lowest-rated companies across any industry.

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014. The report, which includes 19 data charts, examines which companies and industries provide the most bad experiences, what impact those experiences have on spending, and how the negative impacts of bad experiences can be mitigated by good service recovery. The report also examines how consumers share their good and bad experiences with companies as well as with other people. Here’s the executive summary:

To understand the effect of good and bad experiences, we asked 10,000 U.S. consumers about their recent interactions with 268 companies across 19 industries. Results show that Internet services and TV services are the industries most likely to deliver a bad experience to their customers, while grocery chains are the least likely to. At the company level, Scottrade had the smallest percentage of customers reporting a recent bad experience with the company and Time Warner Cable had the highest. More than half of the customers who encountered a bad experience at a fast food chain, credit card issuer, grocery store, or hotel either decreased their spending with the company or stopped altogether. However, our data shows that a good service recovery effort can help mitigate a bad experience. Unfortunately, many firms—especially in the banking, Internet services, and TV services sectors—aren’t very good at service recovery. In addition to the consequences of bad interactions, we also examined which channels customers use to share their good and bad experiences and how these changed across age groups. We then compared these results to survey responses from the past two years. We also uncovered a negative bias inherent in how customers provide feedback. ING Direct, Residence Inn, and Fairfield Inn have the most negative bias in the feedback they receive directly from customers, while Hy-Vee and Hyundai have the most negative bias on Facebook.

One of the most interesting analyses in the report is the look at how service recovery after a bad experience affects the spending pattern of consumers. Here’s a summary of one of the charts showing just how important it is for a company to recover well after making a mistake:

Here are some other insights from the research:

Sixteen percent of consumers who have interacted with TV service and Internet service providers report having a bad experience over the previous six months. Next on the list are wireless carriers, with 12% of their customers reporting a bad experience. At the other end of the spectrum, only 3% of consumers report a bad experience with grocery chains and 4% report having a bad experience with fast food chains.

The five companies with the most customers reporting bad experiences are Time Warner Cable (25%), Motel 6 (22%), Coventry Health Care (21%), and Comcast (21%). There were 10 companies with only 1% or less of their customers reporting bad experiences: Scottrade, Chick-fil-A, H.E.B., Whole Foods, ShopRite, ING Direct, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Vanguard, and True Value.

More than one-quarter of consumers who have a bad experience stop spending with computer makers, car rental agencies, credit card issuers, hotel chains, and software companies. The impact of bad experiences is less costly for parcel delivery services, wireless carriers, health plans, TV service providers, Internet service providers, and grocery chains, as less than 15% of their customers with bad experience stopped spending.

The industries that are the best at responding to a bad experience are investment firms, major appliances, retailers, and car rental agencies. The industries that are the worst at responding to a bad experience are TV service providers, wireless carriers, Internet service providers, parcel delivery services, and health plans.

Thirty-two percent of consumers give feedback directly to companies after a very bad experience and 23% give feedback after a very good experience.

Overall, 25- to 34-year-olds are the most likely to share feedback about their experiences. After a good experience 57% tell a friend directly, 28% share on Facebook, and 18% put a comment or rating on a review site. After a bad experience, 60% tell a friend directly, 31% share on Facebook, and 20% write a review.

We just released the third annual Temkin Customer Service Ratings of 235 companies across 19 industries based on a study of 10,000 U.S. consumers (see full list of firms).

Download entire dataset for $295

Company Results

Here are some company highlights:

USAA earned the top two spots for its insurance and banking businesses. Other companies at the top of the ratings are credit unions, Ace Hardware, Charles Schwab, Dollar Tree, Chick-fil-A, Sonic Drive-In, Hy-Vee, Costco, Trader Joe’s, Advantage, Publix, and H.E.B.

TV service providers and Internet service providers earned nine out of bottom 10 spots in the ratings.

For the second straight year, Charter Communications took the bottom spot. The rest of the firms in the bottom five are Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Optimum (i/o), and CareFirst.

The following companies earned ratings that were 15 or more points above their industry averages: USAA (insurance and banking), Alaska Airlines, credit unions, Advantage, Kaiser Permanente, TriCare, Charles Schwab, and Bright House Networks.

Five companies earned ratings that were 15 or more points below their industry averages: Apple Stores, US Airways, RadioShack, HSBC, and 21st Century.

On average, credit card issuers, banks and fast food restaurants improved the most while appliance makers, TV service providers and investment firms declined the most.

Calculating the Temkin Customer Service Ratings

During January 2013, Temkin Group asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to identify the companies that they had interacted with on their websites during the previous 60 days. These consumers were asked the following question:

Thinking back to your most recent customer service interaction with these companies, how satisfied were you with the experience?

Responses from 1= “very dissatisfied” to 7= “very satisfied”

For all companies with 100 or more consumer responses, we calculated the “net satisfaction” score. The Temkin Customer Service Ratings are calculated by taking the percentage of consumers that selected either “6” or “7” and subtracting the percentage of consumers that selected either “1,” “2,” or “3.”

Download entire dataset for $295

To see all of the companies in the Temkin Customer Service Ratings as ell as all of our other Temkin Ratings and sort through the results, visit the Temkin Ratings website

The bottom line: TV service providers deliver terrible customer service